Slut Shaming and Halloween Sexism

I will be the first to tell you that we have a problem with sexist Halloween costumes.

I'll also be the first to tell you that we're have a slut shaming problem, in a general kind of way.

I got to thinking about these two things today when I was scrolling through the "sexism" tags on Tumblr and I came across a couple of blogs exploring the gender divide between costumes. Here's a great example:

[Photo of a man and woman dressed in "Wild West" style costumes." The woman is in a cowgirl costume with a tiny hat, short shorts, and a front tying tiny shirt. The man is wearing a long brown coat, jeans, holster, bandanna, and full size hat.]

Also on the sexism tag were plenty of people talking about how prevalent slut shaming is in our world.

So here's the statement I tweeted earlier today, "Important/tricky balance: Acknowledging that Halloween costume makers are utilizing sexism but not slut shaming women who buy said costumes." A friend tweeted me back that he'd like to see that as a blog...in other words, what am I really getting at?



I've been pondering it this afternoon and here's what I mean: The costumes currently available for men and women are extremely different. They objectify women. Characters which could easily be the same for men and women are created such that the female versions almost always sexualize the wearer and detract from the reality of what they are supposed to be.

[Female bowler costume: a blue very short dress and heels, woman with coy expression, no actual bowling ball. Male bowler costume is standard bowling shirt and jeans, dude is smiling and holding an actual bowling ball. Um, seriously, who bowls in a short dress and heels? That's not very functional and they sure as hell wouldn't let you walk on the wood.]

The core of this problem is threefold:
1) These are really the only kind of costumes available for women commercially.
2) There is an expectation what women SHOULD wear these costumes for their Halloween celebrating.*
3) This sexualization is happening to younger and younger female costumes.

[Images include girls ranging in approximate ages of 8 to 14  in "sexy" versions of devil, witch, can-can girl, and police officer. They're all in skirts.]

I found all of these costumes at the Spirit Halloween website in the girls section. Let's compare them to a few boys costumes at the same site:

[Image includes the boys version of a devil and police officer. Both are full body covering costumes.]

Ok, so I think I've demonstrated pretty well that there's just a big difference between the female and male versions of costumes. That's not really news. People have been talking about this issue as long as it has been occurring. The temptation might be to say, "Well if girls want different options, they can just wear the boy version or make their own." But that "solution" doesn't really change the fact that these Halloween costumes exist and they affirm the cultural narrative that women and girls' bodies are supposed to be seen and enjoyed by outside parties.

So...what do we do when women want to wear these types of costumes? What do we do when they choose this as a means of self-expression? What do we do when you feel sexy and flirty showing a bit of skin at your Halloween party?

Well I can hardly see how the solution is to demonize women who choose to dress up this way. Calling out individual women and making fun of them just takes us back to misogyny square one. To me, there is a big difference between adults choosing these costumes for whatever reason and manufacturers only making sexualized costumes and marketing them at younger and younger girls.

I guess where I'm getting is that as feminists, we should be mindful that our  understandable objections to "slutty" Halloween costumes not turn into just outright slut shaming. There simply is a space where we can and should balance expressing concerns while respecting individual choices.



*To demonstrate my assertion that women are expected to wear these costumes, I'd like to tell a story from my college ballroom dancing class. The professor (an adjunct, middle aged man who had some success on the ballroom dancing circuit) realized that our midterm was going to fall on Halloween so he offered us extra credit if we dressed up that day for our dances. There were only 7 guys in the class of 40 so he added, and I quote, "Ladies, the boys and I will judge who dresses the sexiest!" I reported that on my year end evaluation, but I have no idea if it made any impact.

**And let me just throw in there that NO ONE should be wearing a racist caricature of another culture as their costume. Ever.